5 Reasons Why Email Marketing is Still King

While a lot has changed in our lives over the past few years, one thing has remained constant. Namely, email marketing still reigns supreme in marketing plans for most businesses.

I use email marketing for my clients looking to create a relationship with current clients and prospective customers. For the investment, you can’t beat the results you can get if you know what you’re doing.

Reasons I think email marketing should be a big part of your strategy:

Cost

Let’s start with the fact that email marketing is inexpensive. Only if you really invest in email marketing software and/or hire a team to create and manage your email campaigns, can it be a big investment.

Here’s what you really need to know: “In terms of ROI, email marketing tends to have a significantly higher return than other channels as it’s estimated that email generates $38 for every $1 spent—an astounding 3800% ROI. Social media comes in at a distant second place with an estimated average ROI of 28%.”

In fact, the cost is one of the reasons why it is so popular—85% of US retailers feel that email marketing is the most effective way to bring in customers and market to them.

Easy

Email marketing is easy. Sure, there are email marketing systems that are “robust” and have so many customizations and widgets that you can get lost. But it’s not social media! You’re not having to stay alert to the latest algorithm change or to what is favored by each platform to have a decent amount of YOUR OWN FOLLOWERS even see the post.

Once you’ve created a template in your email system, you can easily and even quickly send emails to those who’ve chosen to receive your emails. They will all receive it, without you having to spend additional dollars.

Communication

If a customer likes a brand, they’re 28% more likely to sign up for emails so they can stay up-to-date about products and specials. Additionally, 59% of U.S. moms will sign up for email campaigns so they can get access to reward offers. Finally, by adding video to your emails, you can see an increase in revenue by up to 40%.

You have an audience that wants to hear from you, so keep communication lines open by emailing them.

Personalization

While some might worry that email marketing will be regulated to the trash can, there is a way to prevent this—personalization. Studies show that a person is 26% more likely to open an email if it has a personalized subject line.

Furthermore, follow through on these personalized emails give businesses almost 6 times higher revenue than non-personalized. The personalized subject lines breakthrough to the reader and separate themselves from the dozens of “spam” emails that people are hit with each day. This also makes sure that your customers get the information and deals they need to convert into paying customers.

Exclusive Offers

Keep communication going by offering exclusive offers to those who sign up to receive your emails. This is sure to delight your audience as well as increase sales. It will ensure customer satisfaction while increasing your email open rates.

While every email you send doesn’t have to have an exclusive offer, it doesn’t hurt. Change up the offers so that the reader never knows what they may get!

Here are a couple more reasons I love email marketing as a part of an overall digital marketing campaign:

Mobile device friendly — More people access the Internet from their cell phones rather than their computers. That means you can reach them right where they live (and many people today live on their phones). Over half of all cellphone owners use their devices to access their emails and 17% use their tablets.

Automation — Email marketing is also relatively easy to set up and automate. Once you get the automation tools necessary, you can ensure your subscribers get the emails that are of most interest to them. Create drip campaigns so that you regularly stay in touch with your customers and share interesting content with them. This is awesome because it’s a set it and (mainly) forget it trick to save you time.

Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to market to customers and looks to be here to stay for a while!

Need Help with Your Email Marketing?

If you’d like to get your email campaign going while you focus on other aspects of your business, I’m happy to help. Contact me to schedule a consultation!

How to Get Instagram Followers Without Paying for Them

This post is for those of you managing an Instagram account and wanting to grow your followers without having to pay for them through ads or other black hat practices. Here are strategies I’ve used that will help you get more followers over time, but they all take work on your part. You might not see results overnight, but if you’re willing to put in the effort, these tips can lead to sustainable growth with a natural feel.

Here Is Your Checklist to Grow Your Instagram Without Paying a Dime:

1 – Invest in the Quality of Your Content.

Create interesting and relevant original posts/reels/stories interesting enough to follow you back. This is your brand and what people will come to know you by. You never get a second chance to make a first impression!

2 – Post Consistently.

The average Instagram business account posts once each day. Consistency breeds trust with followers and will increase engagement.

3 – Follow Others with Similar Interests

These are likely potential new followers! Asking them questions or commenting on their posts can be a great way of getting noticed by someone else who might just like what they see from you.

4 – Become Active on Instagram Across the Different Streams.

Seeing your feed in the app is great, but if people can’t find it elsewhere then they may never follow you back! Be active on reels, stories, IG TV as well as your regular posts.

5 – Use Hashtags and Mentions to Grow Your Followers.

Hashtags will help with both visibility and reach, which will grow your followers more quickly. Mention other users in your posts. When you tag another user, they will be notified of it if they aren’t following you already – which means that not only do you have a chance at getting noticed by someone else, but also that person might follow back!

6 – Capture Their Attention with a Great Caption.

Do you have a Call-To-Action (CTA)? Does your caption have a hook? You gotta keep users from scrolling past your posts! Spending a little extra time on your captions will ensure you attract the tribe you’re looking to grow. For more info about how to create an Instagram caption strategy, check out this article.

7 – Create Partnerships with Complementary Creator and Brand Accounts.

Getting your Insta page recognized by new audiences is the name of the game and it can happen quickly when you partner with the right accounts. Creating a collaboration with a brand that is not your competition but within your same industry is ideal. You can help each other out by exposing your audience to another account within the same topic that they’re interested in. Collaborations frequently lead to other great opportunities.

8 – ENGAGE!

If you don’t make time each day to respond to comments and like others’ pages that have liked yours, your page will die of loneliness. Grow it by commenting on posts that are similar to your brand (but not your competitor) and posts that use the same hashtags. If you want engagement, you have to give engagement.

9 – Grow by Using Your Analytics

Instagram has really great analytics that you can access for free right on your phone. Use it to understand your audience better. Learn which types of posts are performing well so you can continue creating those posts. Posts that are low performers should be evaluated for replacement.

Grow Your Insta Family Organically

Use these tips as a checklist for ways to grow your followers on Instagram. Remember that it’s all about quality over quantity – make sure you’re putting out good content, and then help others see it by following them or mentioning their posts! With a little time and effort, your follower count will start climbing.

Would You Like Help with Your Social Media?

I love helping clients with their social media strategy and implementation. It’s a great way to grow your customer base and create brand awareness. If you’re interested in learning more about working with me, contact me to schedule a consultation!

How To Launch A Product On Social Media

Launching a product online is not a piece of cake and requires planning and effort. However, social media is a collection of platforms that provides you an opportunity to introduce your product in front of millions of people.

If you’re a first-time entrepreneur, it’s important for you to create your brand image and make it memorable. Before launching a product, the major thing that one needs to learn is how to create an impact on social media so that people start asking about your product. The success of any project depends upon how well the product is known to people.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to launching a product on social media:

Step 1: Define Your Goals Before starting any social product launch campaign.

It’s critical that you clearly define your product goals before starting any product launch campaign on social media. This will help you understand if the product will be a good fit for this channel, how influential you need to be in order to reach your audience through specific channels, and whether or not it aligns with your product messaging strategy.

Step 2: Create Your Timeline.

Understanding product launch timelines is critical to planning a product launch. Start with your launch date as the deadline. Work backward allowing time for each step in the process. If your launch timeline is less than a month, you likely have not given yourself enough time to properly plan and launch.

Step 3: Map Out Your Social Media Channels

Not every social media platform is created equal. And your demographic likely only engage with a couple of social platforms. Determine which platforms are best to reach your ideal audience. Use a third-party app to “listen” in on hashtags you’ve created for the launch. Make sure someone is in charge of engaging with those who repost your content and thanking those who mention you and your product.

Step 4: Create Your Marketing Assets

There’s a lot of content to be created. Starting with your color palette and theme, creating social posts as well as social post copy and blogs for the launch is necessary. You’ll be creating ads and working with partners and influencers to provide your own graphics and content you’d like them to post or share.

Step 5: Coordinate with Influencers and Partners

A big part of the launch is to have your partners help with the online promotional efforts. Adding carefully chosen influencers to your campaign will add even more buzz to the launch. Essentially, you’re looking to surround your target demographic with information about your product from every possible source. Make it irresistible to ignore!

Step 6: Create a Social Media Calendar

There’s a lot going on! You need a calendar to keep on top of what posts go out on which day. You’ll need to ensure influencers and partners know what you’re planning. They will also need to know what they are expected to do and when. Ideally, everything goes off like clockwork but if not, don’t despair, with a calendar you can quickly get it all back on track.

Step 7: LAUNCH!

You’re ready to launch! Deploy your blogs, ads, social posts, influencer campaigns, and partner posts. Take a moment to celebrate.

Step 8: Don’t forget the most important part – Track and Measure

Here’s where all the hard work pays off. Track how your ads, posts, and blogs are doing. You should also track your influencers and partner campaigns. If you’re not seeing increased engagement, increase followers, increased web traffic, and most importantly – increased purchases, then immediately investigate.

Looking for Help with a Product Launch?

Product launches can involve a lot of moving parts. If you’d rather run your business than have to learn or keep track of your marketing campaigns, I’d love to help. Contact me for a consultation!

How To Optimize Your Content Funnel

You’ve heard content is king. But why, when there’s already so much content on the web already? How do you find the time and resources to create content that drives traffic – and more importantly, money in the door? This is where optimizing your content funnel will help you.

If you’re creating content, you want it to be what your target market wants. You also want it to answer the questions that customers have so they’re ready to commit to purchasing.

With that in mind, here are my tips on how to optimize your content funnel:

Getting Leads From Your Content

You’ve probably heard the term ‘customer journey’ before. This is an important aspect of attracting your target customer to your funnel.

Knowing exactly who your ideal client is, becomes vital to the whole funnel but none more so than in this first part, or widest part, of the funnel. It’s in knowing what the pain points are for your customer that you can address it.

Maybe it’s a question you always get, or it could be an answer as to why your product or service is better than the competition. You likely already have an answer. It should be well thought out and put into content on your website, social media, and ads. Capturing the name and email address of everyone who elects to get more helpful information from you will begin to create a big lead source.

Creating Engaging, Relevant, and Interesting Content Can Be a Challenge

It’s not enough to connect with your potential customers. Your ideal client is looking for an experience. They may not consciously realize this but in contrast to your competitors, it’s consistency, authenticity, and quality of information you share that creates an atmosphere for them to take action.

At the point you’ve taken someone from not knowing who you are and what you offer to a lead, you now have them in the middle of the funnel. At this point, you need to continue to nurture the lead by:

Answering common questions about your business;
Inform the lead why your business is better for them than your competitors;
Introduce yourself, your business partners, and associates to your potential customer through social posts, blogs, and emails all so they can get to know you;
Give a behind-the-scenes experience of what you do and how you do it through video.

Essentially, what consumers are looking for these days is to know who you are at every level. You can do this easily these days with blogs, videos, social posts, and social live streams. You can add webinars and virtual events to give your leads the push they need to become customers.

Use Data to Dial-In Content: What Is the Data Telling You?

At the point you have leads and they’ve been downloading your information, watching your social and reading your emails but not converting – we need to look at the data. In your analytics is a story you have to figure out.

Look for what content users are reading and engaging with the most. What is it that is keeping your really hot lead from taking the next step? If you don’t find it in the data, you can use surveys to help.

Determine where your hot leads are online to spend more time and resources in those areas. What are they wanting to know more about? Create more content and deep dive on that subject.

Upgrade Your Content to Increase Sales and Leads

By planning content with your customer in mind, you’ll increase your leads and conversions. Potential customers tell us what it is they want, you just have to read the data to find out what that is. Quality, engaging content IS still king and in more demand than ever.

Do You Need Help Creating Content?

Creating great content for my clients is what I do! I love helping my clients increase sales by taking their online channels to the next level. Let’s have a brief chat. Contact me to schedule a short conversation about your current marketing needs.

Local SEO Tips for Improving Your Website

Small business owners sometimes think the internet can’t do anything for them because they aren’t a large corporation. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, almost half (46%) of all Google searches are for local businesses or information.

Additionally, half of all the “Near Me” searches result in a customer actually walking into that store. To this end, it’s important small businesses create an online presence with a strong website geared toward local SEO practices.

My local clients take advantage of how local SEO gives them an edge over non-local businesses. There’s no better time than now for local businesses to get search engine results and digital marketing love from Google. Today, I’m sharing some of my best tips for you.

Here’s how to improve your website with the best local SEO tips:

Get a Google My Business

Account A must have for any business is a Google My Business Account. Once you’ve set up your account, however, you’re going to need to optimize it for better results. The first step is to make sure your name, address, and full telephone number are located on your website in crawlable HTML text. This will ensure the information can be easily found when searching. Once you create this account, customers will be able to post reviews of your business. Monitor these reviews and be sure to respond to them. If someone posts a negative review, reach out to them and ask if you can correct the situation. This will go a long way towards winning support from your customer base.

Enhance Your Settings and Content

Content is king and each individual page of content is a chance to grab the attention of a potential customer. It’s also a chance for you to establish yourself with Google as a legitimate business. To do this, make sure you’re creating a consistent amount of content and that you optimize your settings on those blogs. Your first step to optimizing your blog is to make sure every aspect of the content (including the URL/web address, title, header, description, and the body text) has high-volume keywords used.

Your focus here should be on local content. If you’re an apparel design firm in Alberta, focus on local opportunities such as t-shirt designs for the Oilers, the Flames, or the Stockton Heat. Find ways to connect with a local crowd and your SEO will improve.

Also, be sure that your website is mobile friendly. This is a huge indicator for SEO purposes with Google and is important since more than half of all Internet searches are made on a portable device.

Build Inbound Links

It’s not enough to create content, you must create content that other websites will link to. One way you can do this is by forming partnerships with other businesses or organizations. They can link to your content and bring in more eyes. Also, consider working with other content creators to do guest blogging or a team approach. These inbound links will go a long way in showing Google that your site is informative, relevant and deserving of a higher ranking.

Submit Your Business to Online Directories and Review Sites

Google My Business is a great directory to register with, but it’s not the only one. Join organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, Better Business Bureau, and other sites like TripAdvisor or Yelp. Also, make sure your information is accurate across all the sources and that you delete any duplicate listings. All of this can have a negative impact on your SEO rating.

Craft a Strong Social Media Presence

One of the easiest ways to lead customers to your site (and ultimately your front door) is to have a strong social media presence. Be sure to link social posts to your Google My Business site so that customers can see exactly what’s going on at your store. If Your Business is Locally Based, Local SEO is the Way To Go If you’re looking to make an impact in your local area, you need to take advantage of everything the Internet has to offer. These local SEO tips will get you on the way to financial success.

If you’re looking for help with your local SEO efforts, contact me for a quick consultation. I work with businesses everyday to increase their traffic both online and in their store.

Responsive Search Ads: What You Should Know

I’ve found a lot of success for companies hoping to set themselves apart from the rest of the pack by creating ads that are dynamic, also known as responsive search ads. Search Ads can create brand recognition which can then be turned into increased sales. In fact, one study has shown that brand recognition is increased by 80% with online ads.

Google advertising is one of the gold standards for the industry with over 60,000 searches conducted each and every second. (That’s over 5 billion searches a day!) As Google is now transitioning towards responsive search ads. I’d like to take a look with you at what this means and how it will impact your business.

What is a responsive search ad?

A responsive search ad is a new standard being used by Google. It allows an advertiser to enter multiple pieces of text (such as headlines and descriptions). Google then optimizes these pieces of text to find the best combination based on someone’s search. In this way, an ad can be more custom-designed to match up and connect with your potential customer.

How does a responsive search ad differ from past text ads?

In the past, a Google ad was made up of a headline and body text. You simply wrote out the text and the headline exactly as you wanted them to appear in the ad. But with a responsive search ad, the text is typed in as “blocks.” These blocks can then be mixed and matched to create multiple versions of the ad. Google can then change these out and rotate them to match the parameters that you control in the ad’s settings. Because of this change, it’s necessary to think of each piece of an ad as a separate part.

What does this mean for advertisers?

Ultimately, this may not have a huge impact on some businesses. Responsive search ads are going to be the default, but it isn’t going to be the only option available. Extended text ads will still be supported. They just won’t be the automatic default when you start making a new ad. Google is still going to offer other tools to help you optimize your ads. These tools will give you the ability to personalize the ad features to meet your needs and to measure the strength of these ads.

What should you avoid when creating a responsive search ad?

Basically, perform careful planning when putting together a responsive search ad. For instance, make sure your text blocks (or assets) are self-contained. If you have a headline and sub-headline that complement each other like two halves of a sentence, these could conceivably get mixed up when the Google system begins mixing and matching the pieces. This could result in an unintelligible ad. However, Google does have a setting in place for responsive search ads that allows you to pin the blocks of text together so that it will be displayed in the right order. However, other parts of the ad that aren’t pinned together will still be interchanged.

Why does this move to responsive search ads matter?

At the most basic level, this is an important move for advertisers who will need to adjust their campaign to use these responsive ads (or at the very least make sure to select regular text ads when designing their campaign).

However, the move also matters as it offers several benefits to the advertisers, including:

More flexible and responsive ads that will adjust to the viewing device widths;
Time-saving opportunities that allow Google Ads to find the best combinations of texts;
Increased wide-reaching ads that will improve the performance of your campaign and bring in more potential customers.

The Next Step in the Google Ad Space

Responsive search ads are simply the next step in the advertising progression for Google. By adjusting to this development, advertisers have the potential to create higher performing, more adaptable ads that will reach more potential customers.

Want Help with Your Responsive Search Ads?

Creating more web traffic and converting that traffic into qualified leads is what I do! If you’d like help with digital ads, social media, or email marketing, please fill out my contact form to schedule a consultation.

Top SEO Trends to Drive Traffic to Your Website in 2021

Emerging from an unprecedented year like 2020, it can be hard to know exactly what to focus your marketing efforts on. The world has relied so heavily on digital content that it has become overwhelmed by the amount of information available about a variety of subjects. It has felt at times like we’re all being fed enormous amounts of data from a hose.

2021 has already begun to offer glimmers of hope and that’s exactly what I hope to give you with these SEO trends. I want to help you cut through the noise and focus on what is important. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dive right in.

Here’s my list of the top SEO trends to drive traffic to your website in 2021:

Keep a Focus on Your Web User
This is my best tip because if you do this, you’ll naturally hit all the marks Google is looking for in a website. That means you need to create content your web users will find useful. They aren’t looking for a hard sell of your product or company. They’re visiting your website to find information that’s important to them.

Make your website as user-friendly as possible. This means have a clean site without pop-ups or site-registrations. Also, make sure it’s hosted on a server that can quickly load the website and is mobile-friendly. (Pages should load easily on a smartphone since over half of internet searches are performed using phones and tablets as opposed to computers.)

By doing this, you’ll naturally hit all the marks Google is looking for when ranking your website. This includes the Core Web Vitals which measure the user experience in terms of loading, interactivity, and visual stability.

Increase your web traffic by researching what people are searching for and how the pandemic has possibly changed their searches. It’s easy to continue to use keywords and keyword phrases from before the pandemic but so much has changed. Learn how searches have changed including not just mobile searches but also voice searches.

According to Andrew Dennis, Content Marketing Specialist, Page One Power, “Google is already showing you which results it thinks serve users’ intent, use this data for your own strategy.” He adds, “For me, SERP analysis will be an important practice not just in 2021, but moving forward as search intents change and Google continues to become more sophisticated to keep up.”

E-A-T and Long-Form Content

When it comes to making your domain authority page score higher, think of E-A-T. This stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (or Page Quality). These are the three metrics used by Google to determine how high to rank your page.

There are three ways to improve page quality ranking including:

Back up your claims with statistics and links to reputable websites. Especially helpful are those with .edu, .gov, or .org sites.
Create original content. If you’re just rehashing information found on other websites, you aren’t going to be ranked as high.
Perform appropriate research on keywords. This includes looking for secondary keywords that can link back to your topic.

Long-Form Content
In the past, the idea was to create as much content as possible. As a result, many sites started to create small pieces that weren’t very informative or helpful. Now, the move is towards long-form content.

Research has shown that long articles (at least 3,000 words) will get three times as much traffic and four times as many shares as shorter content pieces. Besides these advantages, here’s something else to think about. An average piece of content is between 900 and 1200 words. Longer pieces get three-and-a-half more backlinks than average articles.

Local Search/Zero-Click Search

People search to find information globally with the internet (that why it’s called the world-wide-web). However, most people are searching for information about local businesses or services.

There are several ways to improve your site’s local SEO, including:

Creating a Google My Business account that will help your website get featured on the search engine results page (SERP).
Featuring strong backlinks. (Find inspiration by looking at your competitor’s backlinks.)
The power of Zero-Click. This is when the user’s search term has answered the search itself. The user no longer has to click anymore because they’ve received their answer. Many zero-click searches end with a featured snippet. Include helpful information on your website that can answer someone local’s question.

Video
According to Cisco, video content is projected to surpass all other content forms in terms of consumption. That’s why it’s so important to add this to your marketing strategy right now. Here’s what you need to keep in mind:

YouTube (which is a part of Google) has more than 1 billion users. That’s a huge worldwide market to reach potential customers.
Optimize your video. Your videos will be a reflection of your business. If they’re low-quality, that will lesson what people think of your company.
Keywords are just as important for videos. Make sure you tag your videos with appropriate keywords that can get you search engine results.

Mobile SEO
Shelly Fagin, SEO Director and Founder, Highly Searched, Inc. sums it up best when she points out that “Google will essentially be ignoring your desktop site. Your mobile site will determine your rankings.” In fact, some analysts say all SEO is mobile SEO. Because so many are viewing your website on a smartphone or tablet, it’s essential that your site be mobile-compatible.

In 2019, Google rolled out mobile-first indexing. This means the search engine looks primarily at the mobile version of a website. It considers this to be the “primary” version instead of the desktop version. If you aren’t sure if your website is mobile-friendly, you can check out Google’s free mobile-friendly test. This will tell you what you need to do to make it more compatible.

You’re Ready to Drive More Traffic to Your Website in 2021!
In your busy workday, you can’t do everything. But, if you focus on these areas of your marketing, you’re going to see increased web traffic in 2021. If you find that you need help with marketing to new leads and want to nurture your current clients, contact me to discuss packages to suit every budget!

What Do I Need to Know About Digital Ads?

A lot of people ask how I can help them achieve their marketing goals. Their goals are usually increased web traffic, increased quality leads, and/or increased gross income. I like to mention what I use in my toolbox and one of my best tools I use to achieve your marketing goals is with digital ads.

It’s been a growing fact of business for the last twenty years that Internet advertising is a huge market that businesses must explore to stay relevant and competitive. In 2018, digital ad revenue surpassed $100 billion in the United States alone. Unfortunately, many businesses still aren’t taking full advantage of this opportunity.

Let me share with you what digital advertising is, how it works, and the different options available.

The Key Difference in Digital Ads

Digital ads tend to be more personalized. For instance, if you look up information on hotels in New York, then you’ll begin to receive personalized advertising related to New York. However, the same isn’t true if you, for instance, watch a Travel Channel show on New York. This isn’t to say that traditional advertising is outdated or obsolete. In order to have a successful marketing plan, most businesses will need to mix traditional and digital advertising in order to reach the greatest number of potential customers.

The goal of any ad campaign, be it digital or traditional, is to get a positive return on your investment. Basically, you want to earn more money as a result of the ads than you spend on the ads themselves.

Three Main Purposes for Digital Ads

Digital advertising has three main purposes: to inform, persuade, or remind. First, a digital ad should provide information, such as what type of products or services are available that you offer. Then, they should persuade the customer that this product or service is something that they need. To achieve this, you can explain how the product works or how it will make their lives easier if they take advantage of it.

Finally, the ad should also remind customers of your presence and special opportunities such as sales and promotions. This component can also take the form of a targeted email campaign that reminds the customer of a product they were looking at online but didn’t purchase.

Types of Digital Ads You Should Know

There are two main categories for digital ads—display ads and native ads. Native ads provide the best return on investment and appear more natural to the reader, so they are viewed more.

Native Ads

Native ads are paid advertisement that does not look like an ad. It can be embedded into a webpage, such as Yahoo for instance so that it looks like a news article.

Social media ads — These are native ads that are made to look like social media posts, but which are actually paid ads for a product or service. These ads work best when they don’t appear to be ads. The best part is you can target who will see these “ads”. Targeting location, gender, age and other identifiers of your ideal client means you can focus your ad budget on those who are most likely to buy from you.

That means advertisers have to be creative about how their ads look. What’s even better is when you can get your social media ads into someone’s newsfeed. Why? Because then they can share it with others and spread your message to the masses. And businesses are figuring this out! One survey shows that social media advertising budgets have gone up 32% in the last year and should double in the next five years.

Paid search ads — These are paid ads that are inserted into search engine results. This is where keyword research is important. For instance, if someone searches for “Tutors in Los Angeles,” a tutoring company in L.A. could pay to have their website listed at the top of the search. The only thing that will separate this search engine result from the non-paid ads is that this one will simply say “ad” in small print. (And it’s so small that many people don’t even notice it and just click.) This type of advertising starts with the realization that 93% of all Internet usage starts with a search engine being used to find information.

I work with clients to reach their business goals by becoming a partner in their success. Digital advertising is just one part of a strategy to reach goals. I’m happy to educate on the different ways we can get to the next level. If you found this blog helpful, please share!

Social Media during Covid 19

This is an unprecedented time that we are experiencing at the moment. Many small businesses are either closing or hustling to get an online store front set up. As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said many time small businesses are the backbone of our economy and our community – and are in need of our support now – more than ever.

Part of keeping yourself afloat during this time means that you are likely relying heavily on social media to keep your face in the game and your brand in the minds of you customers. But apart from simply flogging your services / products on social media (which gets tiresome – especially for your customers) you may be wondering what else it is you can say?

If you are struggling with what to say on social media during this time – you are not alone. You know you need to be there every day – but you’re just not sure what to say without constantly just flogging products.

That’s why I’ve compiled a full week’s worth of Facebook and Instagram content ideas to help save you time during your already busy work week.

These ideas will help you achieve the perfect balance between building connections, adding value and building your brand.

Here are one week’s worth of social media content ideas to help small business owners get started:

#MotivationMonday “This too shall pass” or “Stay Strong”
find your favourite quote and let your followers know why it resonates with you – ask them to share their favourite quote.

#TipTuesday Share a helpful tip in your niche –
example 1: 10 fruits and veggies you can grow vertically for yard-challenged homes
example 2: 5 ways to tuck and tie a t-shirt for summer style
example 3: 3 foods you can eat to improve your skin overnight

#WellnessWednesday – Wednesdays are all about health and wellness – this is where you can tag healthy brands and products that your retail store may carry and encourage a conversation.

Wednesdays are a great day to schedule shout outs to suppliers and / or curate content from your own followers and re-post with a great big thank you.

#TBT Throwback Thursday: Share a photo or a memory reminiscent of less stressful times – explain the date the photo was taken and the meaning behind it (photo taken summer 2018 – the year we first brought in hanging strawberry baskets and they sold out in one weekend!) Ask your users to share a memory of theirs from the same time.

#FridayFunday: share something funny – a meme or something fun that relates to your industry to ring in the weekend.

The world has gone upside down for the most part during this Covid-19 crisis forcing small business owners to wear even more hats then they normally do. I hope this week’s worth of social media content ideas will help take care of at one less task on your already exploding to-do list. If you are looking for more social media content ideas, or if you are looking for complete “do it for me” social media strategy – please feel free to connect with me. I offer packages to suit every budget

Beginners Guide to Building Your Small Business Email List

I’ve been asked by a few friends who are just getting started in their business (and one who has been in business for a few years now…) how they can start building their customer email list.
And you know what? The answer is really simple – Are you ready for this? The easiest way to grow your email list is to ASK PEOPLE! Yup, that’s all you have to do 😊 Whether you ask your customers in person, or you pop a subscribe button on your website, all you really need is just ask.

Describe & Entice

I have found that the most effective way to entice people to sign up is to include a little description or a little teaser of what your customers are signing up for – here are a few examples:⁣
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1- Get inspired by our before & after home reno projects (Sign Up HERE!)⁣
2- Sign up to enter our weekly Yoga Pose Challenge⁣
3- Waiting for it to go on sale? Sign up and we’ll email you when it does :-)⁣

Pro-tip:

When you place your subscribe button – make sure it is really easy to see – and you may want to put it in a few different places on your website (home page and contact us page)⁣

Why Email? Isn’t that so outdated?

And that brings us to the question of why would you want to email people? Isn’t social media just as effective – if not more? Yes and No. Social media IS so effective – there is no doubt about it. However, what would happen to your customer base if for some reason you could not jump on Instagram or Facebook? What if your account was hacked or what if Facebook went down for hours or days (remember last month?) If, for some reason you can’t access your social platforms then you will be out of touch with your tribe. All that work of growing your followers & fans could disappear. If you are serious about your business then make sure you’ve got a way to connect with your customers outside of social media. Make sure you keep control over your customer list and don’t rely soley on insta or facebook.

Do you need help getting started with adding a subscribe button to your site? Or need to think of something catchy to entice your customers with? Comment below with your question or DM me on instagram and I’d be happy to help 🙂

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